Saint Leo the Great, Pope and Doctor of the Church

Leo was a deacon of the Roman Church, probably born in Tuscany, and was away on a mission to Gaul when he was elected pope in 440. In 449 he wrote a letter to Patriarch Flavian of Constantinople, known as the Tome, setting out the teaching of the two natures in the one person of Christ; at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 it was read aloud, and the bishops cried out, the acts record, “Peter has spoken through Leo”. In 452 he went with an embassy to meet Attila near Mantua, and the Huns turned back from Italy; in 455 he persuaded the Vandal king Gaiseric, who had taken Rome, to spare the people from slaughter and the city from fire. He died on 10 November 461. The Orthodox Church also venerates him.